Cylinder/Valve Cleaner

[topdal46]

My 1999 R1100RT, has 68,800 miles on it now, I'm the original owner.

 

Is there any worth/need for pouring in some cylinder/intake valve deposit cleaner? What would work? Techron

[boatzo]

It is my understanding that most additives are simply kerosene. I may be misinformed on this. However, I have had great results with SEAFOAM, got it from the local NAPA store. It seems to smooth things out fairly well and I have used it in a lot of other engines as well.

[T__]

Phil, a lot of speculation & talk on de-carboning older engines..

 

Not much in the line of over the counter products will help you much once the carbon & coke is baked on & hard as concrete..

 

Years ago I used to use Yamaha's "Combustion Deposits Cleaner" as that stuff does work pretty good but it is fairly strong & has some undesirable side effects.. I basically only used it prior to an engine overhaul as it made combustion chamber & valve clean up much easier.. Thing is once the carbon is softened or broken apart your engine has to deal with it.. Some of that stuff gets down by the rings & can cause issues there.. The warning on the can even says to do an oil & filter change after use for oil dilution reasons..

 

Fuel additives like Tecron & Sea Foam do help the original build-up but they just don’t do enough to remove existing baked on carbon..

 

I guess the place to start is to do a hot compression test.. If your compression is still within specs you don’t have a lot of carbon.. If your hot compression is above max specs then you might have to deal with it.. Another place to look is to pull the exhaust pipes from the heads & look at the back of the exhaust valves,, if they are all coked up & the back of the valve heads have big slugs of carbon blocking exhaust flow then you probably have a carbon problem (or leaking valve seals)..

 

 

Twisty